Mjolnir

by B. C. James

  The removal of Loki had started the timer for the death of Odin and the rest of the gods. The Norns, three bitter witches whose only source of joy was ruining people’s day by making highly accurate prophecies about the worst parts of someone’s future, had looked ahead in time and saw the return of Loki. His children were with him, along with an army of the dead. Worst of all, they were allied with the King of the Fire Giants, Surt. The Norns prophesied a battle that ended with the destruction of Earth and the death of nearly all the gods, monsters, and men. Odin would be counted among the dead. The earthquake that inexplicably struck the state of Michigan was a warning bell that Ragnarok was near.

  The earthquake that leveled Detroit was not unique. It was just one more in a string of seismic incidents that had plagued every continent. As he went about the room picking up things that the quake had knocked from their rightful places, he thought about the explanations that the so called “experts” were going to come up with for this worldwide epidemic of earthquakes. Of course, mainstream science and theology would never accept the truth.

  Simmons came rushing into the office. He had been in the washroom when he heard Agatha’s page over the intercom. He finished his business as fast as his biology would allow and came rushing out from the stall and stumbling through the washroom door, his pants barely up and belt still unbuckled. He didn’t bother trying to compose himself outside Odin’s office. Prolonged waiting just angered his boss. His shirt was still hanging out of his pants when he stood in front of his master. Odin touched the button on his stopwatch.

  “Three minutes and forty-three seconds. That is three minutes and thirty seconds longer than I should ever have to wait for you, Simmons.” Odin modulated his voice so he would get just the right hint of disdain in his tone. He puffed out his already massive chest. His frame was already putting an awful strain on his suit as it was. Flexing for dramatic effect meant risking a burst seam.

  “This will not happen again, Mr. Simmons,” he said through pursed lips.

  Simmons lowered his head as he answered. “Ye…yes sir.”

  Carl Simmons came to Aesir Engineering with an impressive resume, a very high IQ, and a complete lack of anything that resembled self-esteem. Despite a Harvard degree and genius-level intellect, he always rated himself in terms of his physical appearance. He was short. A former girlfriend once described him as pocket sized. Had she used the term “fun size” he could have at least pretended it was a compliment.

  Despite his slight stature, he had managed to pack on two hundred and twenty pounds. This created some problems in how he dressed. He was too fat to shop in the mainstream stores and too short for the big and tall places. Because of this, his attire always put him only one step ahead of most homeless people. The one item of clothing that he wore consistently, because it fit him, was his hat. He wore his black fedora almost constantly. At first, it bothered Odin. He would insist that Simmons remove his hat while in his presence, but after a while Odin got sick of looking at his own reflection in his assistants’ bald head and gave him permission to wear the cap.

  Simmons was also a very light skinned African-American. Because of this, he was shunned by a significant chunk of his own race. He also didn’t quite fit into white society because of his bi-racial heritage. This meant that he lived his entire life in a cultural limbo.

  Odin had picked up on most of these traits when he hired Simmons. The man had more than enough intelligence to be useful, and low enough self-esteem to be easily dominated. This made him the perfect lackey so Odin made Simmons his personal assistant. After Simmons had been with the company for a full year Odin revealed himself as the deity that he was.

  Simmons was, of course, reluctant to believe what his boss was telling him and understandably felt a little cheated by this. Most people get a raise and a handshake on their first work anniversary. But not him. He just got a review that rated him as “carbon based”, no raise, and some narcissistic personality disorder fantasy about how his boss was actually a god. This wasn’t as bad as the employer who tried to pay him in unidentified bodily fluids, but it was a close second for worst anniversary ever.

  Simmons just smiled, nodded, and started to wonder what government agency dealt with insanely delusional weapons makers who had access to a nuclear arsenal. He changed his mind after three spirits of the undead picked up his Kia Picanto and placed it on top of the roof of a local Hardee’s restaurant.

  This was probably not the best working situation for him. He felt insignificant around most normal humans. His sense of inadequacy was multiplied ten thousand fold with the knowledge that he was working for an ancient and very powerful god. The whole thing baffled Simmons’ therapist. For the last few years, he had made steady progress. Now, it seemed he had crashed like the Hindenburg.

  When pressed about it in their sessions, Simmons just curled up in a fetal position on the couch and hugged his knees. He dared not tell anyone what he knew. What could he say? If he yelled out that he worked for a genuine Norse deity, they would likely take him somewhere to “rest” and throw away the key. A future of white pajamas and primal scream therapy was not exactly what he had in mind as a career goal. Even worse, people would begin to question the one thing he perceived as his strong point, his intellect. So for now, he just suffered in silence.

  Odin handed Simmons a sealed envelope. The seal was of the old style. Red, melted wax with the company logo stamped into it. He ran his finger over the envelope, brushing at the black, waxen symbol of a Raven with full wing display. He wasn’t quite sure if he was to open it here or take it back to his office. Odin bristled.

  “What the hell are you waiting for, serf? Open the envelope!”

  Simmons moved quickly at his Lord’s command. Odin’s booming voice frightened him terribly, making even the simplest of tasks an exercise in clumsiness. Simmons dropped the envelope. He bent over to pick it up only to drop it again as he felt the cold stare of Odin’s single eye. He repeated the cycle of picking up and dropping the envelope two more times. Odin kept a stern look about him and sniffed heavily with each mishandled gesture but took a secret delight in the man’s obvious fear.

  Once Simmons finally got a good grasp on the envelope, and himself, he tore the flap from the wax seal. There was a folded message written in Viking runes. Odin was not partial to the contemporary styles of writing. He found them to be clumsy and without art. The ancient god stubbornly held onto the old ways and wrote his messages in runes.

  This was a fairly large problem for Simmons. It caused him to spend hours in his office pouring over Odin’s simplest notes. Seeing as Rosetta Stone didn’t have a program for Norse runes, he would often be up to his armpits in websites and books about the ancient writing. The translations were truly a laborious task. He once was at the office till midnight deciphering a note that basically told him he could go home early. From that day on, Simmons would go the library every night, and learn what he could about Viking runes. Two months of intense study, and over a thousand pots of coffee later, he finally had enough understanding of the writing to be able to read most of Odin’s notes on the spot.

  The document he now held in his hands was a list of names; some with addresses, some with a phone number, others with both. A few were simply names, a description, and last known whereabouts of the person.

  Odin turned away from Simmons and faced the large picture window behind his desk. He stared off, his single eye not as much looking at the world outside as it was looking through it.

  “Our future depends on you delivering every person named on that list to me.” Odin’s voice, for one split moment, had a nearly inaudible shake as he said these words. Simmons knew his boss fairly well. The primordial god had a definite flair for the dramatics. Everything he said or did was, for that moment in time, the most important thing in the world. He learned to eventually look past that. In most cases, Odin would eventually lose interest in whatever project occupied him for a certain moment in time and be on to the
next “most-important-thing-in-the-world.”

  That shake in his voice though, that was odd. Odin would never show weakness deliberately. Simmons had a feeling deep in his stomach that more than the company’s future depended on these names. Usually feelings deep in his stomach had something to do with his lactose intolerance, the gift that just kept on giving. He didn’t remember eating any cheese recently so, he decided that the feeling must be a sense of dread. He was comfortable with that. He lived most of his life in fear, so what was one more anxiety?

  Simmons went back to his desk and began to screw the top off a bottle of Maalox that was kept in his top desk drawer. He took a large gulp from the container and looked over the runes. His eyes danced up and down the list. This was a catalog of Odin’s children and assorted hangers-on.

  For the first time in centuries, he was going to pull the Aesir back together. Considering their general feelings of dislike for each other as a whole, this could be a messy endeavor.

  Simmons wiped the chalky liquid from the corner of his mouth and looked to the bottom of the page. Runes covered the paper until he got to the last entry. It was here that Odin drew a hammer. It was a crude and very angry looking drawing. The lines were heavy and dark. There were at least two spots where he could see that Odin broke his pencil from pushing down too hard. The hammer was the symbol of Thor, the most powerful of the Aesir. Odin’s lackey allowed a little smile to work itself across his face.

  “Thor...Odin...the same room???” He tried to stifle a laugh. To his credit, he managed to catch most of it except for a rather large snort that escaped out from his nose. Of all of Odin’s children, Thor hated him the most. The situation had gone so far that Thor had become a palpable threat to Odin’s very life.

  Simmons folded the note and put it in his desk. Even if he didn’t have an address or phone number for him, Thor was going to be the easiest of them all to find. He started making phone calls and thinking to himself how truly interesting this could be.

  Chapter 2

  When Trent Adams was a child, the only thing he wanted to grow up to be was a professional football player. The men who played this most violent of games were, to him anyway, the personification of every superhero come to life. His mom was less enthusiastic about his passion. She heard the stories about the dirty locker room conversations, the lighting of bodily gasses, and how they considered giving wedgies to members of the debate team as a form of high comedy. Mother Adams considered these activities beneath her nice, middle class son. Despite her reservations, she supported him while quietly hoping that Trent would wind up in a career that involved a white lab coat and the words “Dr. Adams.”

  His mother’s dream of a doctor in the family died a slow painful death over the years as it became obvious that Trent was that rare breed of person who was perfectly suited, both physically and mentally, for professional athletics…football in particular. He had the type of gritty toughness and confidence in his own indestructibility that suggested he might recreationally drink acid or poke an ill-tempered bison with a stick just for fun.

  The American Medical Association, along with any reputable med school, may have wanted nothing to do with him, but the Minnesota Vikings recognized these traits. They invested a lot of hope in him when they traded up to get him as the eleventh player taken in the first round of the NFL draft.

  From the moment he stepped on the Viking’s practice field, he was the type of courageous leader that the team had been lacking since the days of Fran Tarkenton. The team and fans were tickled purple, and Trent was living his dream.

  Yes, all his life, Trent wanted to be a professional football player. That was, until this moment. Three minutes from half-time in a game against the Oakland Raiders during an unforgiving downpour, Trent was panicking in the huddle…and it had nothing to do with the weather. This was the first time in his life that he wished he had listened to his mother and gone into podiatry.

  “Byron, you line up with Smith and double team that son of a bitch!” Trent’s voice crackled with panic and fear as he shouted instructions in the huddle.

  He looked over at the Raiders huddle. All of them were clustered together getting their defensive play ready for the next snap. All of them except for number seventy-four. Thor just stood outside the huddle and stared back at him. Trent could feel Thor’s icy blue eyes piercing him. There was a dispassionate sort of hate and malice in the stare. Those eyes also expressed a sort of casual ease with violence that was unnerving. It was the look someone would expect to see if they found themselves on the wrong end of an encounter with the Night Stalker or that cannibal from Milwaukee.

  Trent couldn’t take it anymore. If it was just the look, he would spend the rest of the game, and probably the day, completely creeped out…but he would get over it. There was history behind that look. Thor was a man whose NFL career was built on the broken bodies of his opponents. This was a guy who ended careers and, on a few controversial occasions, lives as well. The look combined with the body count credited to Thor’s ledger was too much for him to deal with.

  “It’s just a game, man!” Trent screamed over at him, “What’s wrong with you?!” The panicked quarterback started doing some quick math in his head. He was trying to do the sort of fractions where some of the numbers got cancelled out. Specifically, he wanted to make sure number seventy-four was the one removed from the equation.

  He had assigned a 250 lb. tight end along with a 320 lb. tackle to protect him from the six foot four, 280 lb. sociopath. His brain reached the conclusion that the Vikings may need a new tight end and another offensive tackle when the play was over, but it still wasn’t enough. He needed more guys on Thor if he was going to live through the final minutes of the first half. Once the second quarter was over, Trent planned to sneak off quietly during halftime. The team was on its own after that.

  “Moe, line up as far behind me as you need to get a good run at the guy, then while Smith and Byron, have that bastard occupied; hit him with everything you’ve got! Hit him hard…and for Christ’s sake, try to hit him somewhere that breaks! I’ll pay the fine if you cripple him, hell, I’ll give you a BMW if you blow out his knee!”

  The play clock was ticking down, and Trent would have to line the team up for a play soon. Before he broke the huddle, he grabbed his lineman by the facemask and shouted right into the man’s helmet. “Smith, I want you to chop block that bastard. Break his freak’in’ leg if you have to!! Just keep him off of me…Do you understand?”

  The rookie nodded enthusiastically back at him.

  “Go get him!!!” Trent smacked the side of the lineman’s helmet as he gave this last order in the huddle.

  The offense and defense faced each other again. The Raiders had gotten the better of this situation just about every time they lined up. The last few times Thor had hit him, Trent felt his organs moving about independently inside his torso. It was as if they were floating in a glass of water that was being shaken. He had also coughed up blood after the last couple of plays. There was not a lot more he could take, and he knew it.

  Trent began to yell out the signals “Blue thirty-seven, Blue thirty-seven”.

  Above the din of his own voice and the trash talking that was going on between the linemen, he could hear a low, animal growl coming from his left.

  “DOWN…SET…”

  The growl became louder with every moment. There was no more taunting between the linemen, just the sound of a low guttural snarl and the occasional whimper from one of his offensive linemen.

  Trent looked to his left and saw Thor’s head was up; he was staring straight at him. The shadow from the heavy cage of his facemask obscured the features of Thor’s face. All Trent could see were his hate-filled blue eyes glowing out from the darkness and a plumb of red hair exploding out from under his helmet.

  “HUT…HUT HUUUUTTTTT…” In a final moment of unexpected weakness and frailty his voice abandoned him and became more of a mouse like squeak then the confident, clea
r tones of a gridiron leader.

  “HIKE”

  It happened very quickly. He felt the leather football hitting his hands as the center snapped it to him. He became very aware of the sound of his own footsteps on the wet Coliseum grass. Some obscure thought about the value of last rites flashed through his head. At that point something exploded in Trent’s gut. For a quick moment, he saw what looked like snow on a television screen, and then there was nothing but blackness.

  “Hooooooooly shi…” the announcer screamed.

  “John, you can’t say that on the air, remember the network,” Al Michaels said in a joking, almost condescending way.

  “Sorry about that Al, but Holy Mother of God, WOW…I mean, well…WOW…did you see that hit!!!”

  “I felt that hit, John, and the quarterback is down again. What a crushing sack number seventy-four had just laid on him. After the abuse Trent Adams has taken today...I don’t think he’ll be getting up anytime soon.”

  “I think you’re right, Al. He hasn’t moved anything in quite some time, and they still haven’t cleaned the stuff that came out his nose off of his face. I think he may be hurt pretty bad. I can’t remember ever seeing a defense push an offensive line around like this before.”

  Thor watched as the stretcher carried away his latest victim. His ice blue eyes then turned to the Minnesota Viking’s sideline. The head coach was trying desperately to coax his backup quarterback to come out from under the bench.